SurVision Magazine
An
international online magazine that
publishes Surrealist poetry in English.
Issue
Nine
JAMES GRABILL
Galactic Torque In Brancusi
Dwarfed as many seem
to be
by the greater undone
as misremembered as the future
under unthinkable buzz saws
of Saturn and Jupiter cutting
into white trajectories of comets
and freelance asteroids, dark matter
and intergalactic ruins incomplete
without transmorphic catastrophes
that may be abstract expressions
of the gas giants, at the pitches
and warble of '50s Civil Defense sirens
subducting the transitory be-jesus
with shaking and trembling mesmerisms
from lonely hollows. And so rooms slip
off their foundations, gas lines bursting
out of postocular setae past tipping
points of tundra belt methane fizzing
into an atmosphere with lamp-quick
occult coincidence driven out of wrecked
towns into the unassuming forward
comb that runs on inherited nerve
through this mammoth rounding off,
which ministers to the newly dead
as well as anything else fired up
with eye-going appetite, with kindness
brought to bear. For the universe
overflows out of orbiting of the tiniest
to most gargantuan exponential swells
where we never thought we might be.
by the greater undone
as misremembered as the future
under unthinkable buzz saws
of Saturn and Jupiter cutting
into white trajectories of comets
and freelance asteroids, dark matter
and intergalactic ruins incomplete
without transmorphic catastrophes
that may be abstract expressions
of the gas giants, at the pitches
and warble of '50s Civil Defense sirens
subducting the transitory be-jesus
with shaking and trembling mesmerisms
from lonely hollows. And so rooms slip
off their foundations, gas lines bursting
out of postocular setae past tipping
points of tundra belt methane fizzing
into an atmosphere with lamp-quick
occult coincidence driven out of wrecked
towns into the unassuming forward
comb that runs on inherited nerve
through this mammoth rounding off,
which ministers to the newly dead
as well as anything else fired up
with eye-going appetite, with kindness
brought to bear. For the universe
overflows out of orbiting of the tiniest
to most gargantuan exponential swells
where we never thought we might be.
Max Ernst Punches a Hole in Summer
Mineral
abundance of the aggregated
Earth attracts families to beaches
of their origin where the sun showers
upon them, and night star fields
point toward shelter. To this day,
when lunar orbit and the terrestrial
firmament turn in sync, the familiars
will end up planting picnic baskets
on old wooden tables, where nutrient
intake proceeds. In moonlight, families
will back up to holes they've scooped
in the sand, to lay with care clutches
of leathery eggs where the head began
dependent on every inhalation leading
to an exhalation, with sea gusts
maybe the body feels keeping it
buoyant, positioning the head
well above water of the first sea
in living cells. Every moment rises up,
splashing into the back of any realized
life-long education. Every hour we see
abandons time before remaking it,
lifting its yellow-orange Olympic flame
before local TV newscasters peeling
their purple cabbages as the moment
moves on. If it stops, it's likely to collapse,
a political party running candidates
without a platform but with a cardinal
who converted to predatory capitalism,
the head, selling photographed happiness
of believers, bliss of saints, and film
noir posters of venial sins to avoid:
until Ernst plays Coltrane on a Victorian
photosynthesizer, whilst madam's bonnet,
a giant nautilus, swims her in
in the ceremonial manner
to which she's accustomed.
Earth attracts families to beaches
of their origin where the sun showers
upon them, and night star fields
point toward shelter. To this day,
when lunar orbit and the terrestrial
firmament turn in sync, the familiars
will end up planting picnic baskets
on old wooden tables, where nutrient
intake proceeds. In moonlight, families
will back up to holes they've scooped
in the sand, to lay with care clutches
of leathery eggs where the head began
dependent on every inhalation leading
to an exhalation, with sea gusts
maybe the body feels keeping it
buoyant, positioning the head
well above water of the first sea
in living cells. Every moment rises up,
splashing into the back of any realized
life-long education. Every hour we see
abandons time before remaking it,
lifting its yellow-orange Olympic flame
before local TV newscasters peeling
their purple cabbages as the moment
moves on. If it stops, it's likely to collapse,
a political party running candidates
without a platform but with a cardinal
who converted to predatory capitalism,
the head, selling photographed happiness
of believers, bliss of saints, and film
noir posters of venial sins to avoid:
until Ernst plays Coltrane on a Victorian
photosynthesizer, whilst madam's bonnet,
a giant nautilus, swims her in
in the ceremonial manner
to which she's accustomed.
James Grabill is from Portland, Oregon. His poems appear in Calibanonline, Unlikely Stories, Terrainonline, etc. The most recent of his poetry collections are Branches Shaken by Light and Reverberations of the Genome (Cyberwit, India (2020 and 2021). His new collection, Eye of the Spiral, is forthcoming from UnCollected P.
